However, for most developing countries that point is off in the far distant future.
The rural poor have very few options. There are few prospects of off-farm employment in either the urban centers or the rural areas. For those opportunities that do exist, there is intense competition for the few jobs available. Illiteracy further limits the options of many because they do not have the basic tools needed to pursue other economic alternatives to subsistence farming. In some cases, people migrate from the overpopulated, depressed regions to the forest frontier in search of a more prosperous, more secure life. With poverty, comes food insecurity and chronic malnourishment. With few alternatives available to them, the rural poor look to the forests as a short-term solution to their economic problems.
Studies have been carried out on the relationships between rural poverty and deforestation and population growth and deforestation. At times the correlations have been inconclusive because the dynamics of rural land use are very complex, and deforestation is rarely the consequence of one single cause, rather it is the product of the interaction of many forces. For example, on the island of Java in Indonesia, high .
3.
population densities have not resulted in the elimination of forest cover. On the other hand, high population densities in the Andean highlands led to settlement projects in the Amazonian lowlands, resulting in deforestation. The effect of population pressures as a predisposing condition for deforestation is dependent on the influences of the carrying capacity of the land, the prevailing land use practices, the importance of forest-derived products and services to the local people, and the strength or weakness of the institutional framework in place. In most cases, a rising population pressure and a prevailing climate of rural poverty are important conditions that facilitate deforestation.
